JINHA

ISTANBUL - The Women's Equality Monitoring Group in Turkey has called for the immediate withdrawal of a draft law that would allow perpetrators to "bargain" for their freedom in the case of gendered and sexual crimes.

The Ministry of Justice in Turkey has proposed a new law that would allow defendants to bargain their way out of jail time for crimes with sentences of less than five years. The law would allow defendants to bargain for jail time to be converted to a fine, public service, reduced or delayed. Among the crimes that would be included in the law are insults, threats, blackmail, wounding, indecent assault, sexual relations without consent and sexual molestation.

All these crimes are frequently brought in cases of violence against women. According to the proposed law, the victim of the crime will not be consulted about the sentence bargaining; it will be sufficient for the perpetrator to request bargaining in order for the court to consider the option.

For crimes with maximum sentences of less than three months, perpetrators will now have up to two years to pay a daily fee and avoid charges being filed. Defendants canpay at least 20 lira ($7.20) every day to be eligible for this treatment, thus providing a way for perpetrators to eventually escape serving a sentence. In addition, crimes that are not considered eligible for a reconciliation process due to their sexual nature will now be eligible.

In 2014, the Turkish penal code was changed to bring back the concept of "indecent assault." As a result of this change, the punishment for some sexual crimes was reduced from 5-10 years to 2-5 years, said the Women's Equality Monitoring Group.

"There is thus a secret amnesty being implemented for perpetrators of sexual crimes against women and children," said the group. They called the proposed legal change a secretive operation to give amnesty to perpetrators of sexual violence.

"All the crimes counted as 'light' crimes against women and men are seeing a delay in the sentencing process, changing to finesor failing this, sentence reductions for good behavior, and thus being left almost entirely unpunished," warned the group.

The legal change would violate the Istanbul Convention, to which Turkey is a signatory, according to the group.

(hy/fk/cm)